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Letters 



FROM AN 



Unknown Friend. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 



"ZErinities an& Sanctities/' 









BOSTON : 
H. H. CARTER, PUBLISHER, 

No. 3 BEACON STREET. 

1594. 




6^r 



Library 

CoNGkKSg 
I UNGTON 



A 



Copyright, 1894, by T. W. Ripley. 



LETTERS 

FROM AN 

UNKNOWN FRIEND. 



My F?-iend, the World's, and Trtittis, — 

For I do not reach out to possess thee in any 
personal sense, since that would be to crush the 
Psyche and mar relationship ; as clutching at butter- 
flies destroys their glory and reduces the winged 
creatures to a modicum of dust. Thou canst be 
truly the possession of my soul only so far as both 
souls are the world's and God's. We do not 
possess each other, but both are possessed by 
Living Principles, and, side by side, aspire. 



Hush! Behold! In silence — in calm — 

Majestically sweet — 
Stepping adown the vista of years 

The soul of a friend to meet, — 



LETTERS FROM AN 

Slow pacing — no haste — no storm 

Of hurtling elements attending ; 
But stately, the soul cometh — step by step 

With sure purpose tending 
To the long fore-ordained moment of meeting, 
To the sweet glad surprise and the greeting — 
Henceforth to pace the long path together, — 
Shoulder to shoulder, — more than comrade or brother ! 



My Friend, — 

It is the Christmas season and I would greet 
thee. What is most fitting, — that I should bring 
thee a gift or give thy portion to the needy ? Is it 
thy birthday I would celebrate or the dawn upon 
the world of that life which is in the Christ ? Let 
us ask ourselves what it is we would commemorate, 
and what is fitting. Thou art my friend in the 
inner ways of peace and sacred calm. Our friend- 
ship is one of the sacraments. Shall I mingle with 
the grasping, clutching crowd, and mar the sacred 
rite of gift-bestowing by barter and vexation of 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 5 

spirit ? Will not a flower tell thee as well the 
story of my sympathy with thee in the sacred joy 
of this gift to the world of the Christ-spirit? Will 
not a flower be a living messenger, born out of the 
heart of nature and teeming with speech of infinite 
things ? Let me send thee an emblem of peace. 
If I choose thee a gift, let it be symbolic of our 
relationship on the inner planes of the life and love 
universal, and let me go forth to the choosing in 
quietness of spirit. Can any gift be worth so much 
to thee as this same serenity of soul which I would 
bring to thee unmarred ? Wilt thou not find a 
blessing in it no material gift can hold ? Then 
should my face shine and my hands be purified by 
living water when I go forth in calm and without 
haste, but with sure faith to seek the symbolic gift. 
I shall be led to it. It waits. For I will not bring 
thee, embodied in it, hurry and worry and disturb- 
ance of spirit. However small the gift, it shall 
have its word to utter from my soul to thine. 



LETTERS FROM AN 



Friend, — 

What our limited minds deem a great amount 
of space lies between us, but my thought touches 
you. We cannot part. 

The Ideal is the Real. Thoughts are the great 
and persistent Realities ever seeking to project 
themselves on material planes. Behind every visi- 
ble fact is a thought or a principle. I saw a 
drunkard reeling along the street to-day and I 
saw he was the visible sign, in crudest form, of all 
intemperance, whether in appetites or in mental 
proclivities. 

Intemperance is lack of poise. The only 
successful weapon against it is breadth of develop- 
ment, symmetry of growth. One may never touch 
wine or follow the path of vice, and yet be tempera- 
mently intemperate. It expresses itself in word 
or look. It may show itself in loud laughter or 
coquettishness, in unreason and hysteria. 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 7 

Meeting a grossly obese person in the street, I 
may congratulate myself on my unlikeness to him ; 
but am I sure that I am not as much a victim to 
that bloated egoism of which he is the visible sign ? 
I shudder at disease and deformity. Am I as 
greatly moved and pained by those things which 
disease and deformity symbolize ? The reality of 
them is on spiritual planes. My darling sin is as 
great an incubus as a malformed spine, and an 
influence for evil is worse than infectious disease. 



You write that you are impatient for results. 
Impatience is a matter of our finite perceptions, 
which overrate time and space. 

How many ages, think you, did it take Nature 
to make an eye ? The light went on shining 
perhaps millions of years before these projections 
of the brain were unveiled and rendered responsive 
to its vibrations. Nature is not miserly of effort. 



8 LETTERS FROM AN 

She does not count the cost. It was the nature 
and the business of the light to shine, to radiate 
itself. The rest took care of itself. There was 
time enough ! A million years more or less to 
Nature is nothing. She is prodigal of time. So 
long as the light went on with its province the eye 
could be relied upon to appear upon the scene, 
in the fulness of times. It was coming; it was 
nearing; it was at hand long before it was per- 
fected in all its beauty and power, — the jewel set 
in the forehead ! 

So it is with Truth. It radiates age after age 
till the soul of man grows more and more vibrant 
to it. No haste, no visible result ; yet the dull, 
cloddish veil is gradually becoming thinner. The 
soul is destined to look forth, resplendent, reflecting 
the Light of Truth. 

" Say not : I never throw to fool or clown 

My goodly pearls ; for swine I ne'er amassed them. 
Say rather: Are these pearls which I cast down, 
And are those always swine to whom I cast them ? " 



I'NKXOWN KRIKNI). 



The soul Hashes across the plane of material 
life in a brief span, as a mirror held to the sunlight 
darts a ray. We must hold ourselves sunward and 
— leave the rest to eternal laws. 



Our dull and seemingly profitless occupations 
are as a background upon which to paint acts of 
service. 



My Friend of Many Earthly Years and for the Here- 
after, — 

To-day I write from " my little white chamber, 
whose name is Peace," a church chime playing 
outside. 

We cannot imagine what a charm and what 
bright helpfulness we should find in those with 
whom we are daily associated in the family, if we 
would withdraw from them at times. 



IO LETTERS FROM AN 

Relationships have their orbital laws and should 
hold to orderly times and seasons of near approach. 
Inharmony often comes from too frequent meetings, 
the leaven grows bitter. 

People would return to us renewed, bringing and 
receiving blessing from the meeting, if we suffered 
them to withdraw from too intimate association. 

When the importance of the psychic forces is 
recognized it will be enough to say to a friend, 
" I have need of withdrawal for a time," to have our 
need respected without complaint, as much as a 
need for food. Those forces are as easily crushed 
as the down on a butterfly's wing, and to obtrude 
presence upon another in the exactingness of affec- 
tion or of personal need is to act brutally to the 
delicate unfoldings of the spiritual nature. 

So much of the inharmony of daily life would 
become adjusted if people would practice this 
withdrawal. 

We need to be alone at times for the soul to 
find itself amid the roar of the tempests of life. 



UNKNOWN KRIKND. I I 

Be not too much in each other's presence, and 
inharmonious vibrations will often sink to rest, and 
a great calm fall upon the spirit, ft will be one 
of the greatest benefits of greater wealth and higher 
civilization that each human being will be able 
to have a chamber into which to withdraw when 
there is need to regain composure and strength ; and 
such need should come to be respected by those 
deeming themselves our nearest and dearest. 



Beloved, — 

Dare I touch with the crudities of language 
thy great and mysterious joy in the little guest 
newly come to thy fireside ? I behold thee look 
in its eyes, with questioning longing, seeking to 
know what manner of soul this is which thy nature 
hath beckoned out of the empyrean and drawn 
within the portals of material life, assuming the 
great responsibility of its training. I know thy 



12 LETTERS FROM AN 

thought. Thou hast given the child a form and 
an exterior life, but its real life as a soul thou hast 
not given it. That is hid with infinite life-princi- 
ples. Thou owest to that soul great loyalty. 

What patience, what withholding of thine own 
ideals, waiting the child's slower pace, will be 
exacted of thee ! It must be that thy child will 
learn sweetness and generosity from thy dear ways. 
She must learn that thy loyal friendship for her 
may be trusted, and that mother-love in thee will 
not be suffered to grow exacting and arbitrary. 
Thou wilt never act as if she were thy possession. 
Thou knowest that she belongs to her creator, not to 
thee. Thou wilt beware of the tyranny of that little 
word " my " which is at the root of so many errors. 
The Ego says, "My child/' "/gave it life." Did 
you ? Is life then a thing in your gift ? You were 
its channel, but the life cometh from afar. 

As the cares for her helpless years cease, and 
she becomes a woman, with her own tastes and 
interests, thou wilt be strong to make the crowning 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 1 3 

sacrifice of motherhood, if need be, in seeing her 
path lead away from thine by the law of her 
growth. Yet will both of you seek to rejoice in 
whatsoever pleasures the other, and each will pro- 
mote the wishes of the other, each preserving her 
individual freedom as a dower not to be lightly 
laid down. Thou wilt consecrate thy child to the 
uses for which she is best adapted, for thou holdest 
her in trust. And thou shalt not greatly lose. 
The joyous and willing service of a free nature 
shall be thine from her. Her reverent love will 
be the greater for thy exacting nothing. Thou 
shalt not be foolishly indulgent, but shalt teach 
her to confer with thee as to her best good, and as 
to the powers which are hers ; yet beware, in middle 
life, lest thy virtues trip thee and make thee inflex- 
ible of judgment. 

Bigotry is not alone a matter of religion. It may 
enter into all our methods in daily life. It is the 
danger which the crystallized character encounters 
at the high noon of life — that it becomes difficult 



14 LETTERS FROM AN 

to yield its tried methods or judgments to newer 
ways. Thou wilt hold thine in readiness to help, 
and yet with open mind and entire spiritual hospi- 
tality spread wide thy doors to the trial of the 
new ways of a new generation. For no teacher 
is unanswerable but experience. The young often 
hear words of advice as if in a dream. Those 
words have no reality to them until experience 
drives them in on the consciousness. 

I have often felt how insidious is the approach 
of the selfish exactions of age. So much has to 
be said of the irreverence of youth, we forget the 
other side, and that in some homes the children 
attain middle life without being accorded the respect 
to their individual tastes which is their just due. 

Unless a son or a daughter marries and goes 
from home, it often happens that in the mind of the 
parent he or she remains perpetually a child, from 
whom obedience is exacted, and in whom self- 
defence is accounted irreverence and undutifulness. 
A son shakes himself free of much of this and 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. I 5 

asserts his manhood. It falls harder on the 
daughter, who often sacrifices herself in a mistaken 
sense of duty till health and almost reason give 
way and the life is a waste place. But that is not 
a true friendship between mother and child where 
just proportions are thus lost and either nature 
encroaches upon the other. I know thy thought 
and mine are not at variance in this. Thou wilt, 
in after years, appeal to the womanly strength 
of thy child to live out truly her own life — not 
thine. Thou wilt seek to make her self-reliant, and 
thou wilt be watchful in thyself of the encroaching 
selfishness of age. So shalt thou never know age, 
dear heart, but renew and enlarge thy life in her 
younger life and fresh interests. She will bring 
thee immortality here on the earth, and in laying 
down thy life thou shalt find it. 



I saw a child in the street balancing a barrel 
on her head. Her uplifted arms seemed stretched 



1 6 LETTERS FROM AN 

on an invisible cross. She is unconscious that her 
life has any such verisimilitude. She knows not 
that it has power to dignify by its symbolism her 
sordid lot. She goes to Sunday School and hears 
that a Saviour loved her and died for her ; but the 
fact has no reality to her. It has no connection 
in her mind with the barrel, under whose weight 
she staggers along. How can I put her in touch 
with that great divine and eternal fact of a Christ- 
principle unless I manifest it to her by my helpful- 
ness ? Evidently it should reach her in this nine- 
teenth century through its development into the 
altruistic spirit of humanity, I follow her home. 
She displays her acquisition of the barrel with as 
beneficent a spirit as I could put into my share of 
a Christmas festival for her kind. She is evidently 
her mother's righthand man. She comforts the 
children and scrimps her own supper for theirs. 
With great glee she breaks up the barrel, assuring 
her mother of more from the same source ; she 
displays hope, courage, faith ; she emanates the 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. I 7 

very Christ-principle I would have revealed to 
her. She has it already in fulness. It is she who 
teaches me to make of every occasion an oppor- 
tunity for helpfulness and cheer. 

There is E— — for twenty years an invalid, 
debarred from the privilege of helping her parents 
in their old age. She was wise in season, how- 
ever, and has bestowed upon them all these years 
the gifts in her possession for them — patience 
and courage and a sunny temper. Ah, if we 
might all realize that these are more valuable 
gifts to our dear ones than all earthly goods ! If 
we might always sound a sweet note ! Then, at 
least, there would be so much gained : so much 
that is really ours to give and theirs to receive. 



You cannot hit upon any truth that the " wise 
of eld " did not know it and reveal it. It is the 
ears that are deaf. The truth was always sound- 



1 8 LETTERS FROM AN 

ing loud enough. "In the beginning was the Word." 
There has been perpetual witnessing to the truth 
in all nations and all times. Strange — strange 
we do not hear and know. I must believe that 
the inmost soul does know what the mind does 
not record nor the consciousness note. How it 
would dignify life if we did know all that is 
hidden in the struggle and the endurance ; and, 
on the other hand, how shocked we should be to 
behold all the lack behind the hasty word and 
careless act. So many things would be impossi- 
ble to us were we more aware of God; that is, 
more conscious of our being co-workers with Infi- 
nite Law and Infinite Love. 



When I hear people questioning if the miracles 
were actually performed, I feel that they stand on 
the plane of the sense-life, and are enslaved by 
mere phenomena, — by those external things which 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 1 9 

have no reality in themselves, and are only effects 
produced within ourselves. I feel that they are 
down in dim cellars under the House of Life, 
groping vainly amid cobwebs and rubbish. The 
Earth-smell is in their nostrils. The Earth-damps 
threaten them. In dark corners hideous but unreal 
forms seem to menace them. They are full of fears. 
Come up higher, friends, to the plane of spiritual 
perceptions. Listen to the speech of symbols old 
as time and unchanging through eternities ! 

The vital question is, what miracles are perform- 
ing here and now in thy spiritual kingdom. Is the 
Christ-Principle within thee even now performing 
miracles ? Does it turn life's water into wine, — 
symbol of strength and courage and of joy ? 
Through its power do you walk upon the waves of 
discord and turbulence born of the sense-life, and 
of the grasping greed of the Ego ? Is the multitude 
nourished to-day, as then, by an apparent modicum 
of truth, — a paltry five loaves and five fishes ? 
Can you offer the world your single word in humble 



2 LETTERS FROM AN 

faith that it will be multiplied, and that its power to 
nourish is inestimable ? Then have you believed in 
and lived out the miracle of the loaves and fishes ; 
for you have gone back of the symbol to the great 
reality embodied in it, which is a million-fold more 
in its world-wide and age-long applications than the 
material and visible fact could be, and which reveals 
a great spiritual Law in which and by which 
universes may abide throughout eternities. For to 
such Law there is no shadow of turning. Stand 
here in the light of the Christ-Principle and thy 
blindness will receive sight, and thy halting feet 
walk forward. Resurrection from the grave of Self 
and of the sense-life ; renewal from the inharmonies 
that produce disease ; emergence from the tomb 
into the garden of God, the realm of divine laws, — 
these will be no far-away miracles of a past age, 
dim in the mists of history, but a matter of vital 
helpfulness to-day, in all that we do — an Emmanuel, 
— God with us — that our joy may be full. 

Behind every act and every event is that 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 2 1 

which it symbolizes, — some universal and eternal 
principle. 



u Know of a truth that only the Time-Shadows 
perish or are perishable." Time and space, both 
a matter of our limitations in material life, blind us 
as to realities. Yesterday, perhaps, I held the child 
in my arms ; to-day he has vanished. Am I there- 
fore childless ? What has in reality happened ? 
A soul was drawn by mine to expression on the 
material plane. He came over my threshold and 
stood in my presence as if to make known to me 
that he existed and that his destiny was linked with 
mine. A mysterious tie has been consummated 
for future incarnations, or has been repeated or 
emphasized out of the past. Who can say ? How 
intimately has this soul approached the mother of 
its outward form ! How it has throbbed with her 
heart-beats and responded to all her life-currents 
and been permeated with her spiritual conditions ! 



22 LETTERS FROM AN 

How close the bond ! Surely it cannot, in the 
economy of nature, have been for nothing. Surely 
law shall not govern the emergence of the butterfly 
and leave the emergence of a soul to chance ! The 
reason for his withdrawal we may not know, but 
the fact remains that this Soul approached and 
became visible, thereby making known to the 
mother the fact of his existence. She may always 
know now — for has she not seen him ? Did he not 
come within the veil wherein she is shrouded ; and 
when its folds drop away from her, shall she not 
behold the being who for a brief space assumed 
sonship toward her, that she through him should 
know the bliss and the sacred sorrow of mother- 
hood, and that he through her should attain to holy 
knowledge of womanhood and of the mystery of 
birth ? Divine mystery of the Church of old, for- 
ever new, forever re-enacted wherever there is 
spiritual motherhood and spiritual sonship ! 

What impress does this Soul take hence with 
him concerning womanhood and birth ? What ten- 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 23 

derness may grow in him from this brief sojourn 
close to the heart of woman, the heart of joyful 
sacrifice ! Unmarred by earth-life and its misunder- 
standings, the mother-soul calls to him, naming 
him, " Son of my Soul ! " 



Remember St. Theresa's saying, when reduced 
to two pence, " Theresa is nothing and two pence 
not much ; but Theresa, two pence and God are 
all things ! " 



I feel that I need to keep in mind the true 
value of things. What is worth so much to me 
as serenity of spirit ? How many things about 
which I grow disquieted will seem of little value 
by to-morrow even, and surely I would not lay my 
tranquillity on the altar of false gods, — mere doll- 
idols — trifles of the fancy or of the selfwill ! 



24 LETTERS FROM AN 

To-day I suffer pain. Do I not know of aught 
that can help? Need I suffer? I have heard of 
the wounded dog lying down in the stream till all 
fever left his wounds and healing began. Is it not 
given to me to know of the streams of renewal 
ever waiting, ever flowing through all natures ? 
Let me become conscious only of these rivers of 
peace. Rivers and rivers with bounding tides, — 
flowing — flowing ! Let me lie down in their chan- 
nels and surrender my wounds in faith, and let the 
waters of healing bear away my pain, — far away 
where the strong tide of infinity shall engulf them 
and sweep them out of existence. 

Let me believe in the streams of renewal ! Let 
me invite the rivers of peace ! 



It is much to be regretted that we so often light 
our lamp and then fail to carry it into the dark 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 25 

corners of our life, and so miss of its needed illu- 
mination upon thought and act. 

This is as truly hiding the light under a bushel 
as in the usual interpretation of it. To-day I per- 
ceive a truth, label it, pigeon-hole it, and, alas ! go 
away and leave it, when I should take it with me 
into the very next strain and stress at the burden 
of life. The very next perplexity or fret calls for 
it, and I have left it set away in some corner and 
gone forth without it into the dark places and 
paths full of stumbling blocks. 

Theoretically we accept much which we forget 
to apply to the moment's need. We defraud our- 
selves thus of our birthright in truths which we 
are able to perceive in high moments, and which 
are meant for the low moments as well. Where 
should we take our lamp if not into the cellars ? 



Are the pomps and vanities vexing thee ? Hast 
thou ungratifled desires ? Ask thyself in what part 



26 LETTERS FROM AN 

of thee these desires are, if thou wouldst know if 
they are vital to thee. Are they of thy soul ? 
Would these things feed it ? 

Mistake not a cultivated artistic sense for the 
soul of thee ! Like a bright intelligence, it may 
be the tool or servant of the soul, but it is quite 
another thing in itself. The soul has quite other 
concerns. The sign of the soul is most of all a 
consecrated will. 

And what is the test of character? Most of 
all — self-control; but fundamentally, hope, faith, 
courage, humility, patience. A glitter of intel- 
lectual fireworks is not the sun of righteousness 
(right living). 

The test of the intelligence is good judgment 
broadly applied. 

The test of goodness is the power of self- 
sacrifice. 

1894 — The year of our Lord 1894! How 
heedlessly we write it ! The eighteen hundred and 



UNKNOWN FRIEXU. 27 

ninety-fourth year of the slow growth of the spirit 
of love and service. Far more than that. For 
thousands of years the race has been creeping for- 
ward towards its lost Eden of purity and peace. 

One wonders what future event, or event now 
present with us, will seem important enough to 
future generations to change our present reckoning 
and to date time from it. It would seem that as 
time goes on and new meaning is seen in the words, 
we should write " in the year of our Lord " with 
ever-increasing tenderness. 



When the prodigal returned, he said, "Father. 
I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.'* 
Was it that the chief of his sinning, to his repentant 
vision, was against heaven, against the moral law, 
against the filial principle ? Was it outraged son- 
ship and fatherhood which cried aloud on some 
interior plane for rehabilitation ? Was this far more 



2 8 LETTERS FROM AN 

than the personal wrong ? When we wander afar 
and feed on husks, do we, perhaps, argue that the 
husks are green and life-sustaining ? Do we need 
to " receive our sight " before we know them to be 
only husks, and not the principle from which cometh 
the bread of life ? 



The Beast in human nature is tamed in those 
parts of the world called civilized, inasmuch as we 
are no longer cannibals; but he is not eliminated. 
Wherever there is the desire to get something for 
nothing, — wherever the weak is pushed to the 
wall by the unscrupulous in the scramble for pos- 
session, there is the reign, not of the Angel, nor 
even of the Human, but of the Beast of Prey in its 
rapaciousness ; nevertheless, as, ages and dynasties, 
civilizations and countless human histories agone, 
the singer of old lifted up his face to the heavens 
and cried, " Though I make my bed in hell, behold, 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 29 

Thou art there!*' so to-day we may lie down in 
selfishness and wrong, but behold, the All-Divine is 
in the midst of us ! Appeal to it in the waste 
places, in the centres of fraud and greed, and 
behold, it is there ! It awakens — responds \ 
Believe in it ! Appeal to it ! 



To-day thou shalt discover lack in thy brother 
of integrity or of high moral standards ; but beware 
of self-righteousness. To-morrow thou shalt thyself 
disappoint a friend, or fail in helpfulness or in deep 
spiritual insight. 

Thou shalt fail even as thy brother failed unless 
thou hast beheld his fault only with love and sor- 
row at his short-coming. 

The Master's rebuke is symbolic — " Before the 
cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." Swift is 
the coming of this moral Nemesis. 



30 LETTERS FROM AN 

Be as little children holding up their cups to the 
fountains. Wait not for a vase or chalice of silver. 
Take thy common, every-day cup of coarse ware 
and hasten. Hasten, O children ! lest ye miss of 
something precious. I tell you this is no poetic 
fancy. It is a living reality. 

Where, where are those fountains, do you ask, 
and what is my cup ? 

The road lies through some act of service ; 
the fountains stream on every side ; thy cup is 
thine open soul just as it is to-day, obscured by 
perplexities and vexed by trivialities. Drink, and 
see life with new eyes. Drink, and the trivial 
things will fall away from thee. The great realities 
of love, faith, hope, courage, humility, and pa- 
tient service will obliterate the petty grievances 
of life. 

Your thirst amid the desert, O little children of 
the Father ! is greater than ye know. Lift up your 
hearts as chalices to the descending ray. 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 3 I 

It is precisely when you feel done with the 
world, and something within turns with homesick 
longing towards a more perfect state, that it is 
required of you to remain in the world, and that 
you are making ready to best serve it in singleness 
of purpose. Then is the eye single and the whole 
body full of light. 

Say not before thy last hour, " I have done with 
earth." It must come to thee sometime to be a 
co-worker with the Almighty, and it might as well 
be on this needy planet as in any of His worlds. 

Thou art ordered to thy post here. Fail not, 
then, in obedience, though the required service be 
but patient waiting, gaining " sweetness and light." 



To-day I think of a broad, sunlit river, reflecting 
the heavens in its bosom, and the beauty of the 
earth along its borders where the foliage stoops to 



32 LETTERS FROM AN 

behold its own loveliness. This river has depths 
and it has gloomy pools too deep for the sunshine 
to irradiate or warm. But in the main it is broad 
and sunny, and in places the sedges come to the 
surface and are gay with color. It seems to me 
like a healthy human life, — never stagnant, always 
pressing onward, always reflecting the light, purify- 
ing itself through its activity, its dark and stagnant 
pools as few as may be. It is an emblem of buoy- 
ant courage and of serene purpose. It bears its 
way onward to the great sea. It is fed from above 
and from the hidden springs and from all sides, and 
it carries blessing and refreshing. 

Think, my friend, as you approach old age, that 
the serene courage of age is needed by the younger 
lives in their perplexities. The time need never 
come when you cannot speak the word of cheer, and 
the word of the old, backed by experience, carries 
weight. It is when endeavor for personal ends is 
over that we have time and thought and vitality for 
those still in the struggle. 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 33 

The critical sense, with those who possess it in 
any marked degree, is apt to be overdone, especi- 
ally in young people. A hypercritical, cynical 
young person is a monstrosity. The aptness for 
detail in woman makes her prone to this fault. 
Few people have attained the grace to feel sorrow 
at the faults of others as at blemishes on fairest 
statuary. We do not keep in mind a fair ideal 
of what each might be. If we did so, shortcomings 
would affect us more deeply, and our speech would 
be less superficial and we less glib in criticizing. 



Ah! how greatly do we need that constant 
sense of being children of the Almighty, — of being 
allied to the Over-Soul, — which can make us go 
singing in the desert of life like the Israelites of 
old! 



34 LETTERS FROM AN 



Do not, from the fear of being accused of incon- 
sistency, suppress the expression of the heavenly 
part of yourself. No one can live their utmost 
ideal, but the truth is no less truth for our unfaith- 
fulness to it. 

Imagine a spiritual existence in higher spheres 
where there is never any occasion for speaking 
about the weather, the health, dress, trade, or 
domestic problems ; where the communication is 
eye to eye of love, helpfulness, and high purpose. 
Does it not make our human speech seem a mere 
babblement, the chattering of monkeys ? Has not 
the noble power been terribly prostituted to low 
ends ? In higher spheres we may not speak until 
we have somewhat vital to communicate, 



How is it with thee, dear " spirit-in-prison ? " For 
thou hast looked out of window at me and I have 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 35 

beheld thine inner being. Thou art as the spirit 
of a child, although thy earthly years are many and 
thy wisdom great. As a child's were thine eyes in 
their trustful appeal, and like a child thou knowest 
naught of the mysteries, save in some dim uncon- 
scious way, as by almost forgotten memories of 
some pre-existent state. Often, in thy presence, has 
thine angel, who beholdest the face of the Father, 
seemed near, yearning to shield thee from pain 
and trouble yet impotent to do so. Often hath he 
seemed to fold wings of peace and blessing about 
thy head. Often have I felt the exquisite tender- 
ness of his longing as I left thee for the night. I 
seemed to leave thee in good keeping. May wings 
of peace and comfort upbear thee through whatso- 
ever ordeal thou mayst have to endure. Come up, 
dear spirit, and know all the sorrows of earth for 
what they are, and triumph over pain as it is thy 
birthright to do. 



36 LETTERS FROM AN 



My friend, — 

I rejoice in thee in all ways, but most of all 
does that which thou art comfort the soul of me 
for this sojourn on earth, among the shadows and 
half lights. Yet should I not need such comforting 
did I sufficiently regard this earth as a " field white 
unto the harvest" wherein should be gathered fruits 
unto the Master by willing and eager servants. 



The dignity of decay and death is in our will- 
ingness to lay down the body as a worn-out tool, 
or a tool no longer serving the soul's purpose where 
it goeth. 



We read, " Be not overcome of evil, but over- 
come evil with good," yet I think we fail to see 
the many ways in which we allow evil to overcome 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 37 

us. You tell me that C — antagonizes you by her 

narrowness and cant, while another who was no 
sectarian has given you fairer ideals and often 
compelled you to fairer living. But if you allow 

C to arouse a mischievous spirit in you, does 

not the evil of her ignorant egotism overcome the 
" sweetness and light " in you ? Surely you hold 
your ideals too dear to let them suffer eclipse from 
so paltry a cause. Surely any petty antagonism 
must vanish in your pity that she is unable to 
make the path she loves attractive to you, and that 
ignorance compels her to make the lovely unlovely, 
like the princess in the story from whose lips dropt 
a toad when she would fain have dropt a pearl. 

How can you render fair to her the more liberal 
way ? Can you not let her see that the " sweetness 
and light " of the Christ-spirit may not need the 
check-rein of outward observances which we impose 
on the lawless and turbulent? We cannot afford 
to do without the rigid letter of the commandments 
till we are filled with their spirit of just dealing 



38 LETTERS FROM AN 

and a love for orderly conduct. Then it is that 
the mere letter killeth. Then alone is " the Sabbath 
made for us " since all our days are Lord's days, — 
holy days, — and all our living stately as a psalm, 
and all the commandments understood and kept in 
a broader and deeper and by no means more lax 
way than the letter of the law can enjoin. We 
demand of ourselves not less, but other and more 
and better. Love goes further than obedience. 

I suppose in an advanced state of altruism the 
eighth commandment would be done away with, 
and where there was no mine and thine each would 
take freely from all for the good of any one. There 
may be an exact honesty which is close upon nig- 
gardliness, though it be a phase on the upward 
road many have not yet reached. He who is 
comfortable in the belief that he breaks no com- 
mandment may break all in his incapacity to appre- 
hend the spirit of any ; may break the " new 
commandment " " that ye love one another " most 
of all ; may be incapable of living any one day in 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 39 

a way worthy of being the Lord's day, a Sabbath 
of peace and love ; may overreach and defraud in 
all business relations ; may be no honor to his 
parents ; may not know the first letter of the 
alphabet of that spiritual union for high purpose 
which alone is not adultery. 

It is written, " I come not to destroy the law, 
but to fulfil," and "not one jot or tittle shall pass 
away until all be fulfilled." That is, filled full with 
that spirit which underlies all its commands, — the 
spirit of justice and of loving service and of lofty 
dedication, which alone makes for spiritual at- 
one-ment with Most High Truth, and which writes 
the law in our hearts, making us to live it with far- 
reaching application. 



We often say in excuse for ourselves, " It is 
my temperament," as if that settled it beyond cavil. 
Have we, then, surrendered unconditionally to tem- 
perament ? Do we own the temperament or does 



40 LETTERS FROM AN 

the temperament own us ? Who are we ? What 
is it that sits on a throne within and views the 
character and temperament and inheritance, and 
lets the sceptre fall from the nerveless hand and 
droops and drivels and whines ? 

" It is my nature " I say, and forget my nature 
is twofold, — human and divine. Have I inherited 
only on the animal side ? Then 't is time I cried 
aloud unto the heavens for the rest of my heri- 
tage ! Or have I perhaps sold it for a mess of 
pottage ? 



You say that you like not so much theorizing 
about another life, since this one chiefly concerns us, 
and you doubt if we ever have anything more than 
there is here. 

This is, in truth, a wonderful life and world, — 
perhaps the epitome of infinite lives and worlds, — 
but are you quite sure your eyes are open to 
behold, and your heart open to live all there is in 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 41 

and behind this ? Know you all its deep signifi- 
cance? Is there naught in it but that which is 
perishable ? What means this age-long struggle of 
somewhat to utter itself on the planes of matter 
and of thought? Truly there is more in this life 
than we can compass. 



When will the churches become teachers of 
applied ethics ? It is the greatest need of society. 
All of us may intellectually perceive what is just 
and true, but it is another step to feel and love 
moral beauty, and still another to apply the highest 
moral law to all our acts. We do not do the best 
we know. We take our ease in the second best as 
good enough and more comfortable. It would not 
be so comfortable did we truly love the best. 



We sit in sorrow because ignorant of the light. 
In sorrow we reap the harvest of narrow, self- 
centred lives. 



42 LETTERS FROM AN 

Thou who layest flowers on graves, lay rather 
the bloom and sweetness of noble acts and large 
generosities on the altar of thy love for the invisible 
ones. Thou who mournest in thy love for the lost, 
know that they are not lost, but one with thee if 
thou lovest their best good and their swift growth 
in new worlds, and thou passest on with them and 
one with them from glory to glory in the character 
growth which may now be theirs. 

Ah ! it is so strange and so pitiful how little we 
make these things the realities of daily life ! A 
parent is gone, — if a nature of large purposes, 
eager to light up this dark world with the rays of 
truth and helpfulness, do the children seek to 
apprehend his present state and purposes, and walk 
hand in hand with him still, the instruments of the 
good which his heart and soul were eager to do ? 
Glorious legacy from parent to child, over which the 
grave can have no victory ! Or, if the purposes 
were less world-wide, at least thou canst be daugh- 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 43 

terly to some heart for thy mother's sake, perchance 
because thou wert wont to fail in the old time, and 
her motherhood shall still be comforted by thine act. 
And if thy heritage were not of this exception- 
ally high sort, but the common one of a parent's 
faithful care, or even less than that, — even a heri- 
tage of weakness and vice, — if thou hast any sorrow 
and love and forgiveness in thy heart, help the now 
repentant and remorseful spirit to higher ground, 
and make the results of his short-comings, which he 
must now contemplate with such sorrow, as little as 
may be by consecrating thine own life to highest 
uses. This would be a true vicarious atonement. 
Not only what the dear Invisible One would have 
done, but what his glorified and perfected self 
would do, — that seek ye to apprehend and fulfil, 
and so become joined to him eternally in highest 
and most enduring purposes. So shall time and 
space be outdone and one world hold you both, 
and each shall be angel and messenger of light to 
the other. 



44 LETTERS FROM AN 

Eternal Principles cannot desert us. We exist 
in and by them. If I become unable to grasp the 
idea of them, if they seem too universal and infinite 
for my little intelligence to mirror, still do they grasp 
me and enfold me, and the revelation of them to me 
will be in some human and simple guise. 

Never can we actually be " without God in the 
world," though we seem so, and go groping for 
anchorage. A plummet line " stronger than iron 
cables are " goes down into the depths of uncon- 
scious life and feeling and finds the Infinite 
Anchorage ; and when we stretch away from it and 
the line grows taut almost to breaking, our inmost 
nature may thrill in some unexpected moment in 
answer to it. 



We take our feeble lanterns and go forth in the 
darkness into the harvest fields. The chill winds 
from the night of the far past blow mournfully 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 45 

about us, and great is our travail of spirit that the 
darkness only grows more visible and our light can 
penetrate so little way and so few have eyes to 
behold it. And just as we most despair, and grope 
painfully with eyes turned earthward, thinking we 
have all the Master's work to do, lo ! behind us, in 
the east, the Dawn is striding up the sky ! Not one 
ray alone, but a universe full. Thus cometh the 
Light in the fulness of times. And such times are 
these, and the Dawn is breaking on many a harvest 
field, and eyes behold, which, until now, have been 
holden. 



Half the battle is won when one acquiesces in 
that which is required of him. He lifts then with 
the powers that be, and has mighty helpers. Recog- 
nize thy task as the next thing for thee and as that 
which is given thee to do here and now. 

Yesterday I wrote you, " So I plod on." What 
has a creature to do with ''plodding" that can 



46 LETTERS FROM AN 

spread its wings, even though they do not bear him 
far above the earth ? I wrote it, however, out of 
my patience, and there are times when we fall back 
on patience and endurance. Yet if we saw as we 
should see, perhaps there would be no call for 
patience, but only for exaltation. 



First we come to be done with accumulating 
things, and afterwards done with the effort to accum- 
mulate facts. In the natural evolution of man, 
after he has striven and won and made use of wealth, 
absorbing its resulting civilization, the chastened 
and blossoming spiritual nature prompts him to 
return to simplicity of outer life, while the attained 
complexity of living is shifted to the inner processes. 
He wearies of endeavor after those things which 
no longer stimulate or delight eye and ear, and the 
spirit retires to digest and to form those conclusions 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 47 

which constitute wisdom. Then comes another 
order of things. 



How beautiful to find a spot away from the 
flurry of life, but what a mistake to carry flurry into 
such holy places. Be silent and grow calm. " Why 
so hot, little man ? " 

I am convinced we focus evil and attract it to 
us, and assist it to spread by mental emanations by 
thinking much of it even in condemnation. u He 
remembers our sins no more." A perfect being sees 
not sin. He is beyond receiving mental contagion 
from it. His pure and holy emanations drive it 
afar before them and finally permeate the evil with 
good. Too much study of evil, too frequent dwell- 
ing on its details, must blur our angelhood. 

'• Verily thou art an angel of Heaven fallen in 
the mire of matter, although thou dost not recog- 
nize thyself." 



48 LETTERS FROM AN 



What wise and shining ones we may have to 
walk with us daily in all earth's dreary furrows, in 
all its lanes and by-ways of limitation, if we will 
only look up and invite them. Their power to 
approach has its law, and our invitation may be 
necessary. Surely we can make of ourselves mag- 
nets to draw such. We may address them and 
stand receptive to them " without ceasing," and so 
be helped. 

Once in my youth my religious experience 
received a shock from the remark made to me that 
prayer was self-magnetism. For years the partial 
truth of this rose up before me when I would have 
prayed. Only lately can I answer serenely, " What 
then ? Be it so. What is self-magnetism but the 
placing one's self within the pale of a great, divine 
law, and letting it play freely through the spiritual 
nature ? " To magnetize is to polarize, to become 
negative and receptive to the great currents of Deity 
that electrify, revivify, and permeate the soul with 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 49 

new potencies. The negative pole of our being 
should be Godward to receive all ; the positive pole 
manward and earthward to overcome evil with good. 
Evil is as a cloud that wreathes a man about. 
He — the Soul — is within it. Summon him forth! 
Call to the Soul, to the divine ideal of him which is 
in the process of proclaiming itself in his mortal 
life. Cease to dwell on his sins ; for thoughts are 
entities and constitute the permanent element of 
things, and you wish to make the angel in him per- 
manent, and not the demon which denies the good 
in him. 



The poet saith : — 

" Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb, and know it not." 

and the artist paints " The Golden Stair," with 
angels ascending and descending. But the real 
" golden stair " is some dingy, dark, and dirty stair- 
case, where the careworn work-girl toileth upward, 



50 LETTERS FROM AN 

all unwitting if angel helpers walk beside, and 
knowing not the way lies from glory to glory. The 
Mount of our Transfiguration is set about by clouds. 
Broken spirited we walk in the mists and deem it 
the Valley of Humiliation, while the Soul within us 
mounts. 



One of the most hopeful signs for the future 
lies in the fact, that we have a religion among us 
which, with all its faults, yet takes account of the 
Woman in Deity, and "thanks God and Mother 
Mary " for its blessings ; thus perpetually holding 
up the divinity of womanhood and motherhood, and 
their potency to save and uplift. 



He who has many treasures has many duties, 
and he who has many duties has many treasures ; 
and if our duties drive us and are more th^n we can 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 5 I 

do, it is that our hands are overfull of treasures, 
and we must let some slip. So we are blessed even 
in the work exacted of us. 



Take heed, little children of the Light, to live 
each day as if it were your last day, and speak or 
write no word you would long to recall were the 
power to recall it gone forever. And whatsoever 
task is set you to do, do it cheerfully, that your 
memory of it may be sweet. For if a thing must 
be done, we shall like to remember that we did it 
with a whole heart and ungrudgingly. Since that 
which is done grudgingly availeth little and is not 
the deed of the inner man at all ; and that which 
is done heartily groweth light in the doing. 



Most of us feel, the higher we really climb, that 
the results are as nothing. We weary of the strenu- 



52 LETTERS FROM AN 

ous effort towards the heights. But any descent is 
quickly seen. Any backward turn of the wheels 
brings wreck. What we are really doing on the 
steep slopes of life is to prop the wheels of the 
spiritual chariots of victory so that, if they do not 
ascend higher just yet, they shall not, at least, fall 
back and begin any swift descent. So stand fast 
in all faithfulness and oppose yourself to the all 
too strong downward tendencies. 

Instead of shrinking back from life's ordeals we 
should welcome them as opportunities long-desired, 
to prove our faithfulness, to recite our lesson once 
again, this time more perfectly, to expiate, perhaps, 
some long past faithlessness. How eagerly we 
should then go about our tasks ; how purposeful 
would life become. 



UNKNOWN FRIEND. 



53 



My Little Soldiei', — 

Staunch and faithful, ever with face to the 
foe ! Think not when heavy tasks are laid on you 
that it is a misfortune, but rather high honor that 
you are thus singled out to lead or teach. Be not 
discouraged though you see no results. Waive the 
flashing sword of Truth. The trend of the ages 
is behind you, and time but an illusion of human 
consciousness. 




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